Understanding Personal Jesus

How Depeche Mode built their own false god.

Much like its title character, Personal Jesus is a song with many interpretations. There are optimistic, almost evangelical readings, but there are also dark, frightening stories of predators lurking inside: To see that duality, one need look no further than the covers by Johnny Cash and Marilyn Manson. But while each of those stakes out its claim, the original leaves things much more ambiguous, as Depeche Mode invites you to reflect on your own relationship to the concepts of divinity, salvation, and exploitation. Who is your personal Jesus?

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[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) The personal-ad story in the beginning is attested in enough places that I believe it to be true, but I couldn't find an actual copy of what the ad looked like, and some accounts said it read "Your Own Personal Jesus" while others claim it just said "Personal Jesus". Also some early copies may not have included a phone number. It's hard to piece together exactly what happened which is why I kept the description a little vague, but I'm confident in the details I chose to include.

2) The quotes are all truncated, but I tried to do that in a way that preserved their meaning and tone as best I could. Especially for the Gahan's, though, I'm not entirely sure how sincere he was being: I don't have any reason to believe he was deliberately misleading or sarcastic, but it's the sort of line whose meaning can change a lot based on inflection. It was only preserved in a written interview, though, so that tone is lost and I have no idea how accurate Thomas Frank's recreation was, beyond that it's the correct words. I've also found other interviews from later on where, when asked about the song, he goes back to the Priscilla Presley story. So again, please don't take that section as implying the band viewed it as a straightforwardly positive message. They just saw a level of hope and optimism in it.

3) Also, related to the quotes, I want to clarify that, while I had Andrew from Religion For Breakfast read one because we thought it'd be a fun cameo crossover in the context of the song, he didn't, like, review the script or anything, so his presence should not be read as a cosign of anything I say about religion. If I'm wrong, or even just lacking nuance, that's entirely my fault and I don't want to get him in trouble. Hopefully I'm not wrong so it doesn't matter, but just in case.

4) Depeche Mode does have a couple earlier songs that _include_ guitar, but this is the first where it's the main driving figure.

5) This song actually has six official mixes, but I stuck with talking about the single version 'cause I think it's the most recognizable.

6) Another cool thing about that strobing synth under the riff is that each pulse starts out panned to the left and then moves to the middle as the higher tone comes in, giving it this moving, pulsating sound that amplifies the sense of danger.

7) To be clear, the historical accuracy of blues musicians actually selling their souls to the devil is, of course, nonexistent. The thing that's complicated is the relationship between modern cultural conceptions and historically contemporaneous narratives. What I was mostly trying to say is that the blues, as a musical tradition, has no historical connection to satanism or devil worship, even though it is accurate to say that it's become a go-to stylistic palette for music about the devil.

[bmac]

Did this song at karaoke once. Even as a baritone it's actually harder to sing that low consistently with that kind of character. Damn good vocal part.

[cloudbloom]

Violator was the first album I owned, my mom gave me the cassette for Christmas the year it came out and I was 8 years old. A few years later in 1998 I took my mom to see Depeche Mode in concert and thankfully I still have the ticket stub! They were my favorite band for a very long time and this song is one of my favorites. Thanks for covering it🙏

[ultramet]

Alan Wilder is a musical genius. That’s a Yamaha SPX 90 on the vocals before “reach out and touch faith”

[rzbig]

Definitely need to check out enjoy the silence as well. Absolute perfection on all levels, fantastic production, lush chord progressions. the vocal line is written in the relative major which helps give the song a balance of light and darkness.

[TomBelknapRoc]

Not sure when the quotes from Depeche Mode are taken from where they characterise this song as hopeful. But Genesis often now speaks of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway as a play on the Pilgrim's Progress. That's as may be. But it was always an album about heroin, regardless of how the album was structured. Bands sometimes like to reinterpret their works as they get older, to eschew the less-pleasant things they dabbled with in the past. My $.02.

[AB_anonhominid]

What I also loved about Depeche Mode is that their use of right/left modulation when listening while wearing headsets

[horseenthusiast]

Oh, *hell yeah, * dude! I'm so happy to see you analyzing a Depeche Mode song. I feel like Personal Jesus is about someone who's drowning in a horrible situation being offered that hand out of the water by someone they shouldn't trust. The way the song has these walls of sound that build, then ebb out again into starker sections, really reinforces that feeling for me.

Last December, I was lucky enough to actually see Depeche Mode in concert, and they played Personal Jesus. The way the lights crashed over everyone really felt like that wave, and everyone shouted the chorus and reached out to the light. It was really fascinating; it felt like a reflection of the power that manipulative leaders can wield, just as I and many others feel the song is about.

[SaltpeterTaffy]

I always heard the song as an ode to self-determination and self-sufficiency. I always thought the narrator of the song was oneself. Who else could possibly be my own personal _Jesus?_ We're all just mortals.

Of course, I'm also not a believer of any faith, nothing bigger than oneself is required for my perspective of the song, which by Gahan's interpretation makes the faith unnecessary. I see the "faith" in "reach out and touch faith" as strictly metaphorical. Believe in yourself.

[EmyrDerfel]

Coincidentally, Captain Pikant yesterday released a video covering how to sequence the percussion for 3 Depeche Mode songs, including Personal Jesus. It was so accurate ContentID tagged 2 of the songs.

[zanderxymox]

Please do more 80s electronic bangers 🤘🏻

[BluegrassGeek]

Growing up in the 80s, seeing all the televangelists on TV here in the States, this song always struck me as being about predatory religious figures. They were always calling upon viewers to pick up the phone and give them credit card numbers to help pay so they could "continue spreading the word, " all while buying luxury homes, jets, and jewelry. It was sickening, and this song just seemed the perfect encapsulation of that moment in time. I'm surprised to hear members of the band claim it was supposed to be inspiring.

[Krns]

And that's just the single version! The album version has a nice stompy outro, I think you also would've had fun to tear apart^^

[jonathanwingmusic]

What I love about songs like this is how open to interpretation the lyrics actually are. It can mean so many different things to so many different people, none of them wrong (it is artistic interpretation after all). That said, I agree it has a dark and sinister undertone, something like a cult leader or manipulative abuser in control of others. "Truuussst me" it seems to say. Even Cash's cover, which I love, has a sleasy energy. I can picture that one soundtracking a cult leader's rise to power on a commune in the middle of a desert where dissenters are never seen again. Or perhaps a 1920s gangster movie where a gang leader offers "protection" as a personal jesus; cut to images of them viciously murdering anyone on their bad side. That's a lot more the vibe.

I've always loved the production of the original song, it's quite weird, raw, and powerful.

[hYdEdesign]

My man, you are SO artistically intelligent, its beyond impressive. Never stop what youre doing.

[alanhere]

I thought it was about how if you ask two very different religious people about Jesus you get 2 vastly contrasting answers, like the typical "hippie" looking visual depiction of Jesus but at the same time Christian conservatives also approve emphasising different aspects of his personality. How it's a bit empty as a philosophy as anyone who claims to be christian gets thought of as being a christian however they live, unlike for example with daoism or socialism or many other approaches/philosophies that are much more effectively prescriptive about what it means to follow those practices.

[jonprudhomme]

Probably going to spend the rest of the day listening to DM...

[alanhere]

Good episode, I liked how this one was quite easy to follow for someone with less of a music theory background (me).

[sunlitriddle]

This song made me wary of televangelists. Literal interpretation, I know, but to be fair, I was 4 when this song released.

[OuijTube]

So much of this is down to performance/arrangement. I agree with the analysis of the original track here--it was always weirdly ominous. I always thought of this as a kind of indictment of big-money televangelists. (Genesis's "Jesus He Knows Me" is the same, but with Genesis' more wry humor on it).

Things change a LOT when you get to Johnny Cash's stripped-down acoustic performance, though. The speaker THERE is not the slick televangelist/charlatan. Cash's vocals turn it into a kind of prayer. It's quite a shocking transformation.